Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
